newbies linux adventure

[Thomas Mondoshawan Tate]

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On Fri, Nov 02, 2001 at 12:19:24AM -0700, Richard L. Proctor wrote:
> On Thursday 01 November 2001 10:53 pm, you wrote:
> > okay i had an old p1 133 mhz computer and i couldn't get linux installe=
d on
> > it for some reason(hardware related) and EBo was gonna help me out with=
 it
> > but something unfortunate happened to that box :( My friend hooked me up
> > with another box it also has a p1 133 mhz and i dont know what board it
> > has, but i cant get linux installed on this either, most of the hardwar=
e is
> > same as old one(HDD, ram, floppy, cdrom, NIC, sound, video etc...). So =
my
> > question is does anyone know where i can get some old hardware that will
> > work in this box that will work with linux, i am pretty sure it has
> > something to do with either the HD or the video card. okay i just
> > remembered this one utility that inventorys your pc and tells you
> > everything so i will list the important stuff.
> >
> > main circuit board: BIOS: Award Software 4.50PG 09/07/95
> > video: S3 Trio32/64 PCI (732/764) [Display adapter]
> > HDD: Generic IDE hard disk drive (2.15 GB) -- drive 0 - i happen to rem=
eber
> > this being a fujitsu but i cant remember which model
> >
> > if anyone knows why those wouldn't work or where i can get stuff to rep=
lace
> > them(cheaply if possible) i would appreciate it. BTW so far i have trie=
d to
> > install SuSE, mandrake, and zipslack and bigslack
>=20
> Try RedHat

Well... that's a rather counterproductive statement, isn't it? He's having
problems with the Linux kernel and/or a hardware device -- not the
distribution. Trying yet another distribution won't have much of a
difference, I'll wager. Besdies, he's tried zipslack and bigslack
(typicially v2.0 to v2.2 of the Linux kernel), and SuSE and Mandrake
(typicially v2.2 to v2.4 of the Linux kernel), which would logicially prove
that it's a hardware issue, NOT a software issue.

So... My suggestion is that you pull out all non-essential parts from the
computer and attempt to boot one of the distros -- doesn't matter which one,
as long as it doesn't reboot, you'll know it's one of the cards you pulled
out. If it does the same rebooting thing, chances are it's a core part of
the system hardware.

It sounds to me like it's awfully like a memory problem. Try downloading a
memory testing program (memtest86 comes to mind) and checking it.

One question: is this a hand-built machine, or a prebuilt one? If it's
prebuilt, what is the model number and manufacturer of the machine?

--=20
Thomas "Mondoshawan" Tate
phoenix@psy.ed.asu.edu
http://tank.dyndns.org

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